


Boy in a Million

by shrink



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:51:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrink/pseuds/shrink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Harry ignores Louis's birthday, Louis goes to Nick's apartment to look for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Boy in a Million

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AtomicTortilla (DouseMouse)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DouseMouse/gifts).



> The fanart that goes along with this work can be found here: http://shrunkpunk.tumblr.com/post/64719804545/cover-art-and-illustrations-for-my-new-id-fic

“Louis, just the lad I was hoping to hear from.”

“You called me.” Louis propped his elbows against the frozen railing and for the first time of many in the coming minutes wondered why he answered Liam’s call.

“It’s not easy getting patched through to an international pop star on his birthday you know.”

“Is that what I am?” Behind him the apartment he’d ransacked was still in pieces. The sliding glass door was askew and every once and awhile he could feel the heat from inside against the back of his neck. It wasn’t surprising the heat was cranked so wastefully high.

“Among other things, surely.”

“I play football. They tell me. Maybe I’ll be able to again someday when I can finally perfect the invention of bleaching everyone’s memory. Or maybe just my own.”

Liam took a long breath and it almost didn’t feel like a phone call anymore, but more like they were communicating through smoke signals across a valley no one knew how to cross. “Everyone’s memory consists of gifs these days anyway.”

“Welcome to the future, we’re all receptacles of everyone’s least flattering pictures and missteps, isn’t it grand?” He realized he was becoming a Salinger character and was glad, at least, that Liam didn’t think he was capable of reading anything aside from gossip magazines and his own Twitter feed.

“Are you still sore from falling on stage? It only adds to your image as the funny one. It’s slapstick. Maybe planned. Maybe we’re not puppets of Modest. Maybe we’re more like Marionettes. Someone just put too much slack in your strings that night.”

“Hmm, that’d explain a lot.” Louis looked at his own legs now. Knees pressed between the bars that grew out of the smooth concrete under his trainers. It didn’t seem like such a bad thought to be held up by strings.

“I take it back,” Liam said, seeming to interpret the pause that followed. “You’re the morose one.”

“It was your idea.”

Liam laughed a little into the receiver. “So I thought you might be up for a night of drunken revelry. I have junk food and video games at the ready.” It was obvious this was the part of the conversation Liam had been veering them towards. And now that it was here, Louis felt trapped under it.

“I can’t,” his voice was strangled by the wind. Like all the breath was lost before the second syllable. It may have been the cigarette smoke he was inhaling from the balcony below, he turned his face in the other direction.

“Sure you can,” Liam said too loud, covering what sounded like the thud of a car door shutting. “It’s late, we’re awake.  
I have a present for you. That’s what mates are supposed to do, hang out. Meet me at my flat in twenty minutes.”

“I’m actually pretty busy, I’m going to get going.” Louis said, not liking the way Liam’s words were rambling together.

“No, Louis, actually—I read the strangest thing before I called you.”

“And?”

“I’ve had at least five fans tweet at me asking if it was true if that really was you seen going into Nick Grimshaw’s flat tonight.”

Louis looked straight down, trying to see the ground of the ten floors beneath him. Expecting to find the traditional army of sixteen year-old girls with their phones aimed at him. But it was impossible to see through the dark from here. It’d been part of the appeal all along.

“What will these girls dream up next?” he hated himself for his willingness to lie to the only person who still cared enough to call him when he wasn’t contractually obligated.

“I’m looking at three different shots of you entering the building and another of you on the balcony now.”

Louis thought he’d been careful enough; his hoodie pulled over his hair, sunglasses down to his cheekbones although it’d been night. He was amazed he could still be shocked at the sleuth-like nature of fans. Knowing they were down there waiting for him, almost made him feel bad for what he was about to do. He’d never quite worked out how to apologize for the things he hadn’t done yet, maybe that’d been his problem all along.

“Louis?”

Louis realized Liam had been talking all this time. And in his head he could hear the three times Liam had said his name into the receiver, like they’d been jetlagged. Still if everyone was waiting for him to make some grand exit in order to discern if he had bags under his eyes, or if he wobbled as he stepped, they were in for a much more direct display. People were hungry for something to talk about and he was starved for silence. It was about time everyone got what they wanted.

“It was my birthday Liam. The one night of the year when I thought he’d be compelled to show up.” Louis didn’t mean to come off so pathetic, but saying the words out loud made all of this seem melodramatic in a he needed to sleep it off and pick himself up with a mocha frappuccino in the morning sort of way and not in a he was going to flatten himself against the pavement sort of way. Liam would never understand.

So Harry hadn’t answered another of his phone calls or texts, hadn’t accepted another one of his invitations, selectively forgot another thing that was important to Louis. What was one more example of how little Louis meant to the one person that meant anything to him when they were so many piled up from the past year.

“Louis talk to me,” Liam sounded annoyed now. And Louis wondered why he didn’t just drop the phone and let the gravity carry it away. “Is this about Harry? You have to let it go.”

It was strange the things people said that were supposed to be comforting. Louis bit back a laugh, and wished there was more drama to any of it. It’d feel more right if he had one last cigarette he could stub in the railing, or if he could let the rain plaster his bangs to his forehead. But it wasn’t that kind of night, only slightly breezy and a little cool. And the concrete balcony didn’t seem to notice his presence at all. He liked it better inside where the champagne glasses he’d shattered against the wall littered the floor. And Harry’s ornate cologne bottle had followed, creating a pungent musky smell that overwhelmed his senses, not unlike the real thing.

“Okay, listen, I’m on my way there. I have—bloody---paps swarming me. But I want you to go somewhere safe and sit down until I can get there.”

“No,” Louis choked but he knew Liam hadn’t heard. His hand had dropped away from his face, and his phone was clutched at his side.

It’s not that he couldn’t live in a world where Harry didn’t care about him. He could. When they’d started out, in spite of the engulfing crowds and invasive reporters, he’d clung to Harry through all of it. And when things had broken apart, he thought it’d be okay now to be alone. He thought he’d been hardened to life other’s had built for him. He hadn’t been. His legs lifted easily over the railing but in his mind he was walking backwards out the door of the hotel. Watching the years rewind. Singing the words to the same twenty songs backwards, and watching himself grow softer and happier until fame and Harry Styles were just a concept and a name to someone he’d never met.

He tried to think of the height as a metaphor. Maybe it was time all of them came back to earth. Maybe there was something poetic and fated in all of it. When he thought of it that way, his hands almost stopped shaking as they grasped the railing his back was leaning against. He hadn’t expected something he’d done to himself to be so scary. But the wind seemed quicker out here and the ground much closer.

The sound of someone rushing through the apartment behind him brought his thoughts crashing back to the world around him.

Harry didn’t walk slowly and hesitantly like Louis had seen people do in movies in situations like this. He strode to where Louis was hunched and hooked an arm around his torso.

Louis meant to tell him to sod off, or even tell Harry how much it hurt to be drug over the bar like that. But it was Harry and he was touching him. Louis stumbled when he could feel like own feet under him again, and the world evened out. He admired the straightness of Harry’s collar and the torn corners of his lips, everything predictably in its place.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Harry said, catching his breath as he leaned against the wall of the building, apparently satisfied that Louis was done with any dramatic displays. “Modest called. That’s the only reason I’m here.”

So much for Liam not being contractually obligated to call. No doubt they’d called all of them when the pictures started surfacing.

Louis dropped his eyes from Harry’s knees to his trainers. “That’s not true.”

He wondered if Harry would laugh at him or maybe just walk back inside. Instead he sat down across from Louis, his thin legs crossed Indian style underneath him.

“You always believe the best in me Lou.”

Harry’s green eyes looked clouded, and he wondered if it was from the vodka Nick had bought him at a trendy club downtown, or from any sincere emotion he was feeling. It’s not like Louis didn’t understand that situations change, feelings change, people change. He just didn’t want Harry to.

He meant to tell Harry how as he sat there on the balcony in his expensive Armani trousers, how life was no different now than when Harry sat across from him in the X-factor dorms. He meant to tell Harry that it was his birthday. But he could hear all of those words fall flat against the pavement before they’d been said.

“I’ll pay for this,” Louis said, motioning towards the broken apartment, because it was useful and proposed some ending to all of this.

“It’s fine,” Harry mumbled, getting to his feet when Louis did. The cardigan he was wearing was too big for him. It was probably Nicks’. It was hard to remember where Nick ended and Harry began anymore. He remembered the feeling. Now it felt like so much of the qualities he thought belonged to himself had really belonged to Harry all along. There was no way to catch back up.

“There’s a car waiting for you downstairs,” Harry said, his thumb slotted through his belt loop looking at Louis like he wished he could just disappear. Like he a corpse that wouldn’t stay underground.

In the doorway Nick Grimshaw was standing with a sneer on his face. “Pop stars gone wild. Not my preferred venue for such displays, but entertaining none the less.”

Louis passed him, the glass crunching under his feet. And as he walked down the hall, he imagined the look on Harry’s face; not of concern of regret, but of relief. He thought of the tone of Liam’s voice; exasperated and tired. He felt all of those same feelings at once as he opened the door to the stairs.

He passed down the flights of stairs, safe in the walls of the building, without resolve. And as his finger drug over the grooves in the wall, he wondered how management might suggest he sing the backup vocals to _Happy Birthday_.


End file.
